Morning Ticker: Should BP suspend dividend payments?

U.S. Rep. Paul Tonko is among those in Congress demanding that BP suspend dividend payments in the wake of the Gulf spill.

Tonko is joining with the Obama administration in pushing BP to put the money in an escrow account to be used for the clean-up. BP is said to be weighing whether to move forward with a $10 billion dividend payment — along with the public relations consequences of doing so.

Suspending dividends is predictably unpopular with BP shareholders, especially in the United Kingdom, where a relatively large percentage of the country is invested with the company.

6 Responses

If dividends are stopped we lose the money we depend on to pay taxes etc.I invested my money to have a safety net years ago and this government just feels it has a right to steal what is mine..Here we go socialism is here..nothing is yours…I thought Carter was the worst but boy was I wrong.

Tonko is a socialist moron. The share holders of BP deserve their dividends and they should be paid. The best way to put BP into bankruptcy is to force it to stop paying it’s dividend. Investors will dump the stock! The NYS retirement fund owns millions of shares. 17.5 million in 2009. The NYS Retirement system and NYS in general is in financial trouble so yeh heck it’s a great idea to force BP from paying it’s dividend. How stupid can you be??

Last time I checked, owning stocks had a degree of risk involved. Risk is what makes the stock and commodities markets work. Essentially you take your chances, much like gambling. When businesses get in trouble, like BP due to the unknown nature of their liabilities at this time, or are not making a suitable profit, suspension of dividends is a reasonable and prudent business decision. In this case it is also a prudent strategic business and political move. To suggest otherwise is not rational and shows little if any understanding of the free market and the real nature of business and investing. No one is owed a dividend, much like no one is sure that a throw of the dice will yield a winner. Maybe the comments above are the work of STATE workers… people who spend their life away from the mainstream of of risk and reward…. or maybe they just don’t like Paul Tonko… it’s fascinating how some minds work

Lol’s Tonko is just Pandering to a small segement of our society as is his boss Obama..My question is why is Tonko wanting to “Punish” the Shareholders for an accident..Again they are Pandering to the Liberal Voters and nothing more.. Obama and his big talk is a joke..BP has been doing everything possible to stop the leak and the Media just loves it cause they making a lot of money off of it as well…So they continue to pander to Washington and people like Tonko….Lol’s

While it is over all ready (they won’t pay) I really think (thought) they should decide for themselves what to do. They know current cashfow trends, capital needs, etc. of the company and it is the board members responsibility to make decisions relative to the long run preservation of the company. In the short term it appears a wise decision to hold on paying the dividend to conserve cash and then at a later date if this was too conservative a decision they can do an extra dividend to compensate for the lost dividend. Seems like a rational approach.

I always find it amusing when people/governments bash business and corporations. The stock of these businesses and corporations make up the bulk of the assets of most retirement systems so the long term interest of the corporations and the individual person is generally the same. The “greedy” corporation makes money for the pension fund so it can pay out retirement benifits – “be careful what you wish for”

Something I have wondered about is the people who say sieze BP’s assets. So then what do you do!!